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Replies

Grant Sanderson @3blue1brown.com · 26/02/2025

The original puzzle assumes zero friction and zero energy loss in collisions, so obviously there are limits to how far you can get. I can tell you the real limiting factor is energy lost in collisions, more so than friction. The hardest part is energy lost in collisions, more so than friction.

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Grant Sanderson @3blue1brown.com · 26/02/2025

Also, it's a wildly inefficient way to compute pi. To even get "3.14" you'd need this to work with a 10,000-to-1 mass ratio and have a way to count all 314 collisions. Matt Parker and I actually gave this a go, and the results were...okay, but could definitely have been improved :)

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Grant Sanderson @3blue1brown.com · 26/02/2025

Note, there's no reason to restrict yourself to powers of 100. For example, you could use powers of 4 to compute pi in binary. A mass ratio of 64-to-1 should give 25 collisions, which is 11001 in binary, and pi looks like 11.001...

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